Exciting in its taut energy and inventive comedy, Murray Edmond's The Switch is a long poem in forty-nine parts which proceeds, not in a straight line, but in a dazzling display of repetitions, rearrangements and transformations. It's a game, a show, an entertainment and a meditation about love and the passage of time. more...

Walls to Kick and Hills to Sing From: A Comedy with Interruptions is a new poetry collection from Murray Edmond. Arranged in six acts, ‘Exposition?, ‘Complication?, ‘Revelation?, ‘Peripety?, ‘Catastrophe? and ‘Denouement?, it merrily experiments with voice and performance, including, in various forms, monologues, dialogues, choruses, songs, scene... more...

An accomplished collection of poems, A Pattern of Marching brings us messages of cool precision and accuracy from Elizabeth Smither. Restrained elegance, fine craft and wit characterise the verses. This is, in the words of the last line of the title poem, 'A skilled performance anyone could share'. more...

‘What, after all, is the truth of a place that has only just been worked into language?? From Polynesian Mythology to the Yates? Garden Guide, from Allen Curnow to Alice Tawhai, from Jessie Mackay to Alison Wong, from Julius Vogel to Albert Wendt, from the letters of Wiremu Te Rangikaheke to the notebooks of Katherine Mansfield – Maori, Pakeha, Pasifika,... more...

Sing-song, Anne Kennedy?s first book of poems, explores the strains of parenthood – its anxieties, fatigue and exasperation – the contemporary experience of women, and the redeeming power of love in the face of adversity. The poems? setting is the domestic life of a family of four, told from the mother?s perspective. Moving house, the gruelling experience... more...

As Far as I Can See is a beautiful and moving collection from a prizewinning New Zealand poet. Leggott writes with passion, tenderness and courage about her deep sorrow at losing her sight. The sharpness of images so characteristic of Leggott and her wonderful ear for the musical sounds and rhythms and pauses of language reach a new poignancy, a tragic... more...

The fourth book in AUP?s New Poets series brings together the work of three distinct new voices: Chris Tse, Erin Scudder and Harry Jones. The popular series, which has the aim of bringing fresh new poetry to a wider audience, began in 1999 and continued in 2002 and 2008, and has been responsible for launching the writing careers of well-known poets... more...

How does ‘music hold us up?? In The Blind Singer, Wellington writer Chris Price ‘cultivates the art / of listening? to explore this question. Price has a clear and precise ear and the poems dance and shimmer around ‘the heart of our hearing?. And she draws on wider material: Music and science meet, shake hands, are introduced to history. Scepticism... more...

Relaxed and intimate, engaging and wise, Incognito is Jessica Le Bas?s first book. Her poems have been carefully collected but are wonderfully various. Themes, characters and voices come and go as the poet moves in and out of identities and roles – sometimes known, sometimes incognito – discovering new world views, new horizons, whole new windows... more...